Early life

Blanchett was born on 14 May 1969 in the Melbourne suburb of Ivanhoe.[6] Her Australian mother, June Gamble,[7] worked as a property developer and teacher, and her American father, Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr., a Texas native, was a United States NavyChief Petty Officer who later worked as an advertising executive.[8][9][10] The two met when Blanchett's father's ship broke down in Melbourne.[11] When Blanchett was 10, her father died of a heart attack, leaving her mother to raise the family on her own.[12][13] Blanchett is the middle of three children, she has an older brother Bob Blanchett (born 1968), and a younger sister Genevieve Blanchett (born 1971).[12] Her ancestry includes English, some Scottish, and remote French roots.[13][14][15]

In 2005, she won her first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her acclaimed portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator.[29] This made Blanchett the first actor to win an Academy Award for portraying an Academy Award-winning actor.[30] She lent her Oscar statuette to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.[31] That year, Blanchett won the Australian Film Institute Best Actress Award for her role as Tracy Heart, a former heroin addict, in the Australian film Little Fish, co-produced by her and her husband's production company, Dirty Films.[25] Though lesser known globally than some of her other films, Little Fish received great critical acclaim in Blanchett's native Australia and was nominated for 13 Australian Film Institute awards.[32][33]

In 2007, Blanchett was named as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World and also one of the most successful actresses by Forbes magazine.[35] Blanchett had a cameo as Janine, forensic scientist and ex-girlfriend of Simon Pegg's character in Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz (2007). The cameo was uncredited and she gave her fee to charity.[36][37] She reprised her role as Queen Elizabeth I in the 2007 sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and portrayed Jude Quinn, one of six incarnations of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' experimental film I'm Not There. She won the Volpi Cup Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival (accepted by fellow Australian actor and I'm Not There co-star Heath Ledger), the Independent Spirit and Golden Globe Best Supporting Actress Award for her portrayal of Jude Quinn.[38] At the 80th Academy Awards, Blanchett received two Academy Award nominations – Best Actress for Elizabeth: the Golden Age and Best Supporting Actress for I'm Not There – becoming the eleventh actor to receive two acting nominations in the same year, and the first female actor to receive another nomination for the reprisal of a role.[39] Of her achievement that year, critic Roger Ebert said, "That Blanchett could appear in the same Toronto International Film Festival playing Elizabeth and Bob Dylan, both splendidly, is a wonder of acting".[40]

A Streetcar Named Desire production traveled from Sydney to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.[48][49] It was critically and commercially successful and Blanchett received critical acclaim for her performance as Blanche DuBois.[10][50][51][52]The New York Times critic Ben Brantley said, "DuBois has been pulled gently and firmly down to earth by Ms. Blanchett and Ms. Ullmann ... What Ms. Blanchett brings to the character is life itself, a primal survival instinct ... Ms. Ullmann and Ms. Blanchett have performed the play as if it had never been staged before, with the result that, as a friend of mine put it, "you feel like you're hearing words you thought you knew pronounced correctly for the first time.""[53]The Washington Post's Peter Marks proclaimed, "What Blanchett achieves in the Sydney Theatre Company's revelatory revival of "A Streetcar Named Desire" amounts to a truly great portrayal – certainly the most heartbreaking Blanche I've ever experienced."[54]John Lahr of The New Yorker said of her portrayal, "Blanchett, with her alert mind, her informed heart, and her lithe, patrician silhouette, gets it right from the first beat ... Blanchett doesn't make the usual mistake of foreshadowing Blanche's end at the play's beginning; she allows Blanche a slow, fascinating decline ... I don't expect to see a better performance of this role in my lifetime."[55]Jane Fonda, who attended a New York show, deemed it "perhaps the greatest stage performance I have ever seen",[56] and Meryl Streep declared, "That performance was as naked, as raw and extraordinary and astonishing and surprising and scary as anything I've ever seen ... She took the layers of a person and just peeled them away. I thought I'd seen that play, I thought I knew all the lines by heart, because I've seen it so many times, but I'd never seen the play until I saw that performance."[57] Blanchett won the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.[58] The production and Blanchett received Helen Hayes Awards, for Outstanding Non-Resident Production and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Non-Resident Production award, respectively.[59]

In 2011, Blanchett took part in two Sydney Theatre Company productions. She played Lotte Kotte in a new translation of Botho Strauß's 1978 play Groß und klein (Big and Small) from Martin Crimp, directed by Benedict Andrews.[60] After its Sydney run, the production traveled to London, Paris, the Vienna Festival and Ruhrfestspiele.[10] Blanchett and the production received wide acclaim.[61][62][63][64][65] Blanchett was nominated for the London Evening Standard Award for Best Actress,[66] and won the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role[67] and the Helpmann Award for Best Actress.[68] She then played Yelena, opposite Hugo Weaving and Richard Roxburgh, in Andrew Upton's adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, which traveled to the Kennedy Center and the New York City Center as part of the Lincoln Center Festival.[69] The production and Blanchett received critical acclaim,[7][70][71] with The New York Times' Ben Brantley declaring, "I consider the three hours I spent on Saturday night watching [the characters] complain about how bored they are among the happiest of my theatregoing life ... This Uncle Vanya gets under your skin like no other I have seen ... [Blanchett] confirms her status as one of the best and bravest actresses on the planet."[72]The Washington Post's Peter Marks dubbed the production Washington D.C's top theatrical event of 2011.[7] Blanchett received the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Non-Resident Production, and the Helpmann Award for Best Actress.[68][73]

In 2013, Blanchett played Jasmine French, the lead role in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine, co-starring Alec Baldwin and Sally Hawkins. Her performance received critical acclaim, with some critics considering it to be the finest of her career to that point (surpassing her acclaimed performance in Elizabeth).[80] The performance earned her more than 40 industry and critics awards, including LAFCA Award, NYFCC Award, NSFC Award, Critics' Choice Award, Santa Barbara International Film Festival Outstanding Performance of the Year Award, SAG Award, Golden Globe Award, BAFTA Award, Independent Film Spirit Award and the Academy Award for Best Actress.[81] Blanchett's win made her just the sixth actress to win an Oscar in both of the acting categories, the third to win Best Actress after Best Supporting Actress, and the first Australian to win more than one acting Oscar.[82][83][84]

Allen's daughter Dylan Farrow has since criticized Blanchett and other actresses for working with Allen.[85][86] Blanchett responded, "It's obviously been a long and painful situation for the family and I hope they find some resolution and peace."[87] In response to questions about her advocacy for women in Hollywood as part of the Me Too movement, Blanchett stated that the justice system, and not social media, should be the "judge and jury" in such cases.[88][89]

In 2020, Blanchett returned to television by starring in two miniseries. Firstly, Blanchett starred in the Australian drama series Stateless which is based on the life and controversial mandatory detention case of Cornelia Rau. Stateless was funded by Screen Australia. Blanchett also served as creator and executive producer for the series.[131] The series aired from 1 March 2020 to 5 April 2020 on Australian public broadcaster ABC. Stateless will also premiere internationally on Netflix later in 2020.[132] Secondly, Blanchett currently headlines and produces the FX/Hulu historical drama miniseries Mrs. America as conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly.[133]

Personal life

Blanchett is married to playwright and screenwriter Andrew Upton. They met in 1996 on the set of a TV show and were married on 29 December 1997.[140][141] The couple have four children: three sons and one daughter. Their sons are Dashiell John Upton (born 2001),[142] Roman Robert Upton (born 2004),[143] Ignatius Martin Upton (born 2008),[144] and daughter Edith Vivian Patricia Upton (adopted in 2015).[145][146] Blanchett said that she and her husband had been wanting to adopt ever since the birth of their first child.[147]

After making Brighton, England their main family home for nearly 10 years, she and her husband returned to their native Australia in 2006.[148][149] In November 2006, Blanchett attributed this move to desires to select a permanent home for her children, to be closer to her family, and to have a sense of belonging to the Australian theatrical community.[150] She and her family lived in the Sydney suburb of Hunters Hill.[151] Their Hunters Hill residence underwent extensive renovations in 2007 to be made more eco-friendly.[152] Following the sale of their property there in late 2015, Blanchett and Upton purchased a house in East Sussex, England in early 2016.[153]

Blanchett has spoken about feminism and politics, telling Sky News in 2013 that she was concerned that "a wave of conservatism sweeping the globe" was threatening women's role in society.[154] She has also commented on the pressures women in Hollywood face now: "Honestly, I think about my appearance less than I did ten years ago. People talk about the golden age of Hollywood because of how women were lit then. You could be Joan Crawford and Bette Davis and work well into your 50s, because you were lit and made into a goddess. Now, with everything being sort of gritty, women have this sense of their use-by date."[155]

In May 2016, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced the appointment of Blanchett as a global Goodwill Ambassador.[169] Blanchett, along with other celebrities, featured in a video from the UNHCR to help raise awareness to the global refugee crisis. The video, titled "What They Took With Them", has the actors reading a poem written by Jenifer Toksvig and inspired by primary accounts of refugees, and is part of UNHCR's "WithRefugees" campaign, which also includes a petition to governments to expand asylum to provide further shelter, integrating job opportunities, and education.[170][171]

In the media

Blanchett became a spokesperson for and the face of SK-II, the luxury skin care brand owned by Procter & Gamble, in 2005.[172][173] Blanchett became brand ambassador for Giorgio Armani fragrances for women during 2013, being paid $10million to do so.[174] She was the lead actor in the January 2019 advertisement of 45 seconds, of Giorgio Armani fragrance SÌ,[175] filmed by Fleur Fortuné[176] In 2018 Armani announced Blanchett was to become the first beauty ambassador for the company, representing the company to all of the world (termed: global), by absorbing responsibilities for skincare and make-up, in addition to her previous 2013 commitments to fragrances.[177]

In 2017, Blanchett was made a Companion of the Order of Australia by the Queen for "eminent service to the performing arts as an international stage and screen actor, through seminal contributions as director of artistic organisations, as a role model for women and young performers, and as a supporter of humanitarian and environmental causes."[4][178]

See also

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